Warm Hearts
by Bibee
Summary: She is a zombie in a world that is ruled by the Dead, with no idea who she was, like much of her Dead brethren. But when the rumours of a cure turn out to be true, she is thrown into a her former life and all that comes with it, including a boy she feels a strange urge towards


I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And not in the 'what is my purpose in this world?' sense, but literally. I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm standing on a bridge, It overlooks a dull grey-blue lake, river, ocean _thingy_. The city beyond this bridge is silent and rotting. Much like myself.

With nothing better to do, I focus on the almost conspicuous _thump, thump, thump_ in my chest. It's been a week since the Thumper took residence, or retook I guess, and even longer since my last 'hunting' trip. But oddly, I'm not hungry.

The telltale signs of hunger, my bones becoming heavy and the veins that snake my ashen skin rising to the surface, are almost non-existent.

There have been rumours, groans really, of a cure. A cure started by a Fleshy who fell in love with a Living. Sure, it may just be a trick to lure the Fleshies in to be massacred, but truthfully. I don't care.

Being dead sounds no different from being Dead.

I walk off the bridge and into the city and start walking, walking to the Dome. I don't really know why yet, but it sounds better than just standing here with only the Thumper as company. I move through the streets at an extremely slow pace and after a while, stop in front of a dusty shop window and look at the pale reflection that stares back at me with vacant, grey eyes.

_Me_, something in my mind says.

I jump a little at the voice, but settle back into my staring contest quickly.

My competitor, which my unusually talkative brain reminds me is me, sway a little on spot. Understandable, since she's Dead. She, _I_, am wearing faded jeans and a black hoodie with writing on it, which appears to me as jumbled, moving blobs.

Too bad I can't read.

But suddenly, one of the blobs turns into something my long retired mind registers. A 'C'. Then an 'L'. An 'A'...

Then I'm bombarded with a string of letters so suddenly that I'm almost knocked back onto my butt. The letters, previously blobs to my Dead eyes, have formed a sentence. 'Clearly, I have made some bad decisions.'

A choking noise escapes my lips and one corner of my mouth twitches up in a grimace-like grin. I just laughed. And smiled.

The hell?

It seems that Living me had a sense of humour.

I continue to walk towards my destination that looms like a hostile host in the distance and think absently what might've inspired me to buy this particular shirt.

O~o~O

_ Holy blubber nugget. This is a lot of Fleshies_.

Blubber nugget? Yep, Living me was funny. Living me also probably had light brown hair, but over the course of who knows how long I've been Dead, my hair has become a knotted mess the colour of wet dirt, hanging limply on my shoulders.

I've been able to gather this from staring at my passing reflection as I ventured deeper into the city, but as I stand at the very back of a huge mass of Fleshies, all gathered around what I assume is the Dome entrance, I start to panic a little. I think Living me was shy. Mega shy.

I take a deep, unnecessary and quite shaky, breath and begin to shove my way through the moaning, groaning choir. It feels cold and clammy inside the crowd, which makes perfect sense really, considering not _one_ of the few hundred Fleshies here have any body heat.

As I near what I have to guess is the front of the mass, I hear something. Something strong and lyrical to my ears. A voice. And it triggers something inside my brain.

_Summer, sunshine, the beach. A little boy chases a smaller girl down the shoreline. She has eyes the colour of ground coffee. So does he._

And just like that I'm pulled back into the world, where I am nothing more than a walking bag of flesh looking to expand it's collection. The Thumper is dancing in my chest so quickly it hurts as I push faster, well, as fast as _my_ legs will carry me, through the swaying bodies and break through the final barrier of cold, white flesh.

I see him immediately.

He stands a good 5 meters away, dressed all in black with a gun slung over his shoulder. The boy from my memory. Except he isn't a boy. He looks in his early twenties, but he has the eyes of the little boy, it _has to be him._ He's talking to the crowd of lifeless muscle that I just broke through, 2 soldiers on either side of him.

I take a step forward, I'm now in front of the other Fleshies and he notices me, our eyes meet.

The Thumper falters his, or her, jig in my chest as his eyes fall on me and widen in disbelief.

"Zoey?"

O~o~O

_"Zoey?"_

My hand twitches at the name, but it means nothing to me. Just another word that holds no meaning in my clean-slate world.

"Zoey," He says again, softer this time. His hands fall limp by his sides and his warm brown eyes speak to me of desperation. "It's me."

As if by their own accord, my feet propel me forward, but I don't make it far before a bullet finds itself lodged in my shoulder. The blow knocks me back a few steps, but in general, is harmless. I don't feel the pain. The only proof of the wound is the thick, brackish blood that seeps through the sleeve of my hoodie, turning it a darker black.

"Stop!" he yells, pushing back the soldier, who I assume is the one that shot me, as he reloads his gun. "_Stop_!" He shouts again, stepping in front of me. "You will not hurt her." He says through gritted teeth to the other soldiers who stand as astounded as me.

Why would this man protect me? Sure, I feel this strange _urge_ to be near him, but that's me. What purpose could I possibly serve this man?

"But Luke," The one that shot me says, taking a step closer to the man, _Luke_, and narrowing his blue eyes. "She tried to attack you."

"No. She didn't." Is all Luke says in return, before he grabs me by the arm and leads me through the main Dome entrance.

I may not be alive, but if I was, I'm sure that tomorrow I'd have a bruise from Luke's iron grip. "Where . . . going?" I'm able to wheeze as he pulls me down a wide corridor.

"I'm taking you to where we bring all the others like you." He says, his voice suddenly as bitter as acid. We reach the end of corridor and I see a maze like street system, some streets have people in them, some of them strangely deserted. Luke pulls me down one of the vacant streets and into a ramshackle building.

The walls are a dull concrete grey and a metal table sits in the middle of the room with matching chairs on either side. Luke takes a seat in one and gestures I do the same.

I sit awkwardly in the chair and stare at Luke for a few minutes. He has a very interesting face. A strong jaw and dark brown hair cut short, but not short enough that it doesn't hang in his eyes every now and then. I like it. "What . . . now?"

He doesn't say anything, this time it's his turn to study me. he scrutinizes me with narrowed eyes and I notice how long his lashes are. "Do you remember me?" he asks.

I can't honestly say I do. I had that _one_ memory, but I still don't know where he fits into my Living life. So I stay silent.

He takes this for confusion. "My name is Luke." He says. "I'm twenty four, I've lived at the Dome for three years. And I'm your brother."

O~o~O

_Brother, well, that would explain the memory. And how I know that Luke's lost a _lot_, of baby fat since my memory._

I open my mouth as if to speak, but nothing comes out but a the sound of my fumbling tongue. "My name . . . Zoey?" I am able to finally wrap my tongue around a sentence, okay, _semi_-sentence.

Luke seems pleased and sends me a hesitant smile, as if he is still wary of me. "Yes. Your name's Zoey." He extends his hand, as if to take my lifeless one in his, but thinks better of it and withdraws. Smart guy. I don't know my limits yet. Even being in this area filled with Living, breathing people is starting to take its toll after the few minutes I've been talking with Luke. Well, Luke talking to _me_. My bones feel heavier, more weighted, and I feel whatever life keeps me walking starting to drain. Not good. But I won't harm Luke. _I won't_.

"Do you remember _anything_ from when you were human?" He asks, leaning forward like an eager child getting a treat, his brown eyes gleaming.

I try to frown at him, but my mouth doesn't move. I'm not sure if I like Luke anymore. I may not be Living, but I like to think that the Living and I are at _least_ the same species. "I _am_ . . . human." I say, slightly annoyed. I might just reconsider not eating him for that.

"Right, sorry." He says, and he actually looks _sorry_, but what would I know. I'm Dead. "Do you remember anything from when you were alive?"

I think about this a moment. Before the vision only minutes before, which was triggered by hearing Luke's voice, I'd never had an inkling of my former life. And I hadn't minded. I blink a few times before answering, trying to remember anything from when the Thumper was young and without troubles. "No . . . But I see . . . memory when hear . . . voice." My voice gradually gets deeper and raspier as I talk. That's got to be my longest sentence ever.

"Whose voice?"

"Yours."

A ghost of a smile brushes over his face, but it leaves when he meets my eyes.

I can only imagine what he sees when he looks at me, what he thinks. To him I am an impostor, a deadly _thing_ wearing his long gone sister's face. When he sees my face, memories must come flooding back, happy memories, ones of his childhood, _our_ childhood. But then he would remember losing his sister. Losing me.

"Is there anything you'd like to know about? Maybe the Dome Cure Program? Where you'll be staying?"

I pause and think, before saying "Me."

This time, he actually smiles. "Well, where to start?"

"The beginning . . . would be nice."

"Okay. You were born in Brooklyn, your name was Zoey Louise Landon and you were 17 when the first outbreak hit New York."

I flinch at his use of words. _You _were_ born in Brooklyn. Your name _was_ Zoey._ So I was right. To him I'm not his sister. "How old was . . . I when," I gesture to myself in general with a lazy flop of the hand. I haven't had any major movement in individual fingers since, well, never.

Luke shifts in his seat and doesn't meet my gaze, out of disgust or discomfort I'm not sure. "You were 19."

"And you?"

"21"

I stare at my pale, corpse hands and wonder. Was I an artist? Perhaps I played an instrument, maybe I had my head stuck in a book. All these questions and no way to get them across to the world outside my mind. "How?"

Luke stares at his own hands as he explains. "We'd been living at the Dome for 2 months and I was starting to work as security." He says, his voice oddly lacking emotion. Maybe not oddly really, he _is_ talking about how I died. "We were running out of medicine at an incredibly fast rate and they needed more. They were pulling together a retrieval team, and you volunteered." He smiled a little, but it wasn't a happy one. "We fought for hours. I didn't want you to leave the walls. You thought I was trying to take Dads place and was being an over-protective twit. Your words, not mine." He adds. "I signed up the next day. I was sure you needed protection and I wasn't going to let you get hurt, even if my life depended on it." He laughs bitterly to himself and he lifts his gaze, once warm and the colour of hot chocolate, now cold and unbelievably distant. "I did a pretty good job, didn't I?"

I swallow loudly and physically fight against the urge to wrap my arms around him. For all I know, he might think I'm attacking and put a bullet in my brain.

"We were gathering the medicine when you heard something, I was sure it was nothing, so I ignored you. Only later did I find out you went to investigate on your own." His voice hitches and tears gather in his eyes. "You walked into a pack of them. You screamed and we heard you, but by the time we got to you, you were already dead." His hands are trembling and I get the idea that I may be the only one he has ever talked to this about.

Fancy that. The first person he tells this about just happens to be the story's damsel in distress.

He knits his hands together to stop them from shaking.

"Not . . . your fault." I whisper through dry, blue lips.

"Yes, it is."

We sit in silence, both not daring to meet the others eyes. He clears his throat and my eyes move with the speed of a snail to meet his gaze.

I expect to see hatred in his eyes, sorrow, a blind rage, but I find none. All vulnerability is gone and he looks fine, if you ignore the tense muscles in his neck. But I tend to notice those kind of things, whether it's a Dead thing or a Zoey thing I don't know.

"Com'on," He says, holding his hand out to help me up from the seat. "I'll show you where you're staying."


End file.
